Lovely spring day...before the spring snow and rain.  Other than the biting cold, I like the rain in April and May.  But it picked a bad weekend  for it.  Friday and Saturday I will be in the "Everything Goes" ---I don't think it is a play more than a combination of skits---doing my one number "Stormy Weather" totally stolen from my best friend and mentor Michael Nicosia (I am not above stealing GOOD material).  Then Saturday, after my song, I will have to board the Hyundai tour bus and hit the Crown Social to set up and perform our April Cabaret show (9-12 this time, next show may be a different time so watch for updates).  Last night I worked the bar again, so out of rhythm but fun.  Tonight dress rehearsal.  I have at least two dresses to choose from for the one song, so I may have to wear one each night of the play.

Big news is that I will get to live a dream and front a Big Band in June.  Sounds cool huh?  Me, a 20 piece band behind me doing swing, torch....ok a ballad.  But hey, I get to front a Big Band... 

That is my quandary.  You see, I have the chops (No brag just fact) to do that and that is my favorite era in music.  Every young woman in the 30's and 40's wanted to be a girl singer with a traveling band (hey this is MY fantasy so go with it).  Logistics aside as it was a rough life that was probably even rougher for a woman where she didn't have much privacy and she was on the bus with 20 men for hours or days, eating greasy spoon foods, it was having adoring fans, yes young men, young men who may never come home, staring at you on stage in your fancy dress. 

OK off track again (maybe I should name this blog the sidetrack).  But the reality back then was there were only so many bands and only so many openings for women like Doris Day, Ella, Jo Stafford, Helen O'Connell and Helen Forrest.  These openings are even fewer now with less bands and almost zero openings for a transsexual.  First there are very few people who will even consider it.  I have been extremely lucky being able to perform in the Cabaret and even more so with several of the best piano players in Denver at great venues.  Also, not being one to play the falsetto card and sound fake, I sing in MY voice. (See "passing" blog).  The musicians in this particular band don't think I can sing, at least they think I can't sing the songs the women sang. 

Last night the comment was that an arrangement they had was for a "Male voice".  I replied "It will be done by someone with a male voice but who looks like a woman."  I didn't understand why a song was the purview of one gender over another.  At worst you change a few words.  If the singer is singing about the loss of her man, then that fits my image, right?  If the song is about someone losing their "woman" unless it is talking about making babies, why couldn't it be changed to losing your man?  I know most the songs from that era, I can sing them...but being trans is a huge barrier for how things will be viewed.  So I will live my fantasy with one or two songs, then like that Serenade in Blue...fade into the twilight.  But it will be a night to remember.

I sometimes forget that there was a previous life that I had lived.  I see me as a woman.  The patrons and the dancers at the band's gig, are over a "certain" age and would not be amenable to the TS.  Older persons tend to be more set against it and that is the fan base.  (On a personal note, I have been to several rehearsals for this band and not ONE member has shown anything but respect to me.  They are, or at least seem very open).  We do have to look at the people who will be paying though.  It is the same with any business, and a Big Band is a business.  But I hope that someday, how you look will be second to how you perform.   With anything, age, gender, race, color, sexuality...it should not matter as long as you do a good, and more likely great, job.

So add this to my blog before.  As a transwoman I am going to be "out there" doing what I do, with pride.  I am going to be me.  Because if I had decided to stay hidden, to be unseen and go unnoticed, I would have missed an opportunity of a lifetime, fronting a big band in a gorgeous gown.  This will be my shining hour.